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Thursday, 29 May 2014

This film is from the Y5/6 Rugby game between Auroa Primary School and St Josephs Opunake as part of the Y5/6 Crowley Cup competition. It took place at St Joes on Wednesday 28th May. It was a play off for the top two form teams in the competition. Auroa Primary School are in the purple with the orange, St Josephs are in their traditional green. Due to the wind on the day the students who were doing the editing decided to overdub the footage. Produced by Will from Room One. The final score (adjusted) was 51-14 to Auroa who remain undefeated in the competition.

Monday, 26 May 2014

Our friends from Nexus International School in Singapore have tried again. Following our Skype call and conversation they completed an initial two dimensional map. We gave them some really detailed feedback on their maps and under the leadership of Alyssa we gave them further directions. Thats lead to their maps of Auroa Primary School, Part Two. This video is from their wonderful class page.

Sunday, 25 May 2014

This week we've had two students from Room One, Auroa Primary School have over 4,000 hits on their individual student blogs. Izzy reached the mark slightly ahead of Emily. All of our students have done an amazing job with their students blogs which have been created for the first time for our school.

On Fridays the Junior School at Auroa Primary School, Rooms 8,7 and 6 have been holding each week a discovery time, assisted by the classroom teachers and some senior students from Room One. This Frida the focus was Art. Alex from Room One took these pictures to record what was happening.

This week the entries for the NZAIMS tournament in September close. This tournament is the Intermediate Schools Nationals competition, in 2013 there were 200 schools and 6500 students who competed across the different sports that are provided. The final week for school registration is this week and the number of schools is continuing to increase - and listed as school number 77 is Auroa Primary School.

This is the first time that Auroa Primary School has entered this tournament. This year we are entering teams in Girls Basketball and Golf. We will have regular updates from the preparation of this tournament which is now just over 100 days away!

Recently we've been looking to help a classroom of students, Primary 4, from the Royal School of Dunkeld in Scotland. They sent us a wonderful video with some questions for us in New Zealand as they are studying Commonwealth Countries. We viewed their video in class this morning and brainstormed about how we could respond. As they are a Primary 4 class we decided to get some of our students from Room Eight, our Y1 class to answer on our behalf. This video was filmed today by Izzy, Gemma and Alice.
Video for Royal School of Dunkeld in Scotland from Myles Webb on Vimeo.
At the twenty second mark of our video you can glimpse in the background Mount Taranaki which is the most famous landmark in our area. We also have a number of students looking at producing presentations about Scotland which will be be posting soon.

Tuesday, 20 May 2014

At Auroa Primary School we've got some exciting competitions coming up. We are really excited that our Y7/8 Sport has just started and we're going to be attending the NZAIMS tournament in Tauranga, later this year. At the moment our Y5/6 students are currently competing in the Crowley Cup. Its a local competition against other Primary Schools from our area in Rugby and Netball. Our first game took place last Thursday with Auroa Primary School hosting our friends from Opunake Primary. This video of the Rugby was filmed in Imovie by our students who then edited and published it. Will had to reshoot the introduction because the day it took place and we had strong winds which eliminated all our Netball footage! It was not ideal conditions to film, record and present.
Crowley Cup Vs. Opunake from Myles Webb on Vimeo.
Player of the day for Auroa in the Rugby was Matt Clarke, Auroa who are in their purple with orange trim, won the rugby 51-0. Katelyn Hughes was player of the day for Auroa who won 11-8. You can read about it on our school website here.

Our friends at Opunake Primary School beat us to the post in this case. They've got some great blogs up and running and we enjoyed visiting them often. Mr Lodge and the students of Room 14 have been posting very regularly and you can view their footage of the sports exchange.

Monday, 19 May 2014

Already this year we've been involved in some great collaborations involving the use of various programes. We've created three dimensional models of the Third Grade Thinkers from the USA and our friends from Selwyn House, Christchurch. Recently our friends from Nexus International School went through the process of creating a model of our classroom. They intially asked for volunteers on their class page. Meg and Will left comments describing our classroom. Last Friday they Skyped our classroom for further information. Alyssa lead this learning conversation. Today in class we saw the first stage - the students of Nexus putting together and describing their two dimensional models of Room One, Auroa Primary School. How accurate was it? Well you'll have to stay tuned. This is the video produced by Fabulous Five @ Nexus, Singapore, describing Auroa Primary School, Taranaki, New Zealand.

Sunday, 18 May 2014

Over the past two weeks we have been very excited to watch the traffic coming to our classroom from a number of sites, one of which has been Mrs Baders class from San Franciso, USA. We're holding a brainstorming session in class Monday morning about San Franciso and we will be posting the results online. We're also going to be visiting their individual student pages and commenting on their work:
It is important that we don't forget the rules that we have to abide by when commenting.

Saturday, 17 May 2014

Friday was a special day for the students of Auroa Primary School, the start of school wide electives. Each Friday the students from Auroa Primary School have the opportunity to take part in a lesson in a different context during school wise electives. Students have lessons from 12pm to 1pm, with two special electives starting at 10:30am. One of these is 'Kiddy Karts' where the students have an opportunity to ride minature ponies with a sulky. These images were organized by Logan from Room One. Special thanks to Mr Chittenden (Senior) and Mr Chittenden (Junior).

Wednesday, 14 May 2014

Our students are busy preparing for the 2014 Robocup Competitions, with our regionals now several weeks away. As part of our preparation the students of Auroa Primary School are very fortunate to have the support of our fabulous PTA group. We have purchased ten new EV3 Robots for competition which are more advanced than our previous NXT versions. The video below was created by Heavenlee and Lucille and consists of a brief interview with Mrs Knapman who runs our school robotics program. We've more details and information to come as we move towards this event. Filmed, produced and published by Heavenlee and Lucille on Wednesday 14th May 2014.

Today Auroa Primary School were able to celebrate the students who played in the combined Rahotu, Manaia, Opunake and Auroa Schools Y7/8 League Team who won the Taranaki Intermediate Schools competition.

The team beat Devon Intermediate in the first game, before defeating Francis Douglas and Hawera Intermediate. In the semi finals the combined Auroa/Rahotu/Manaia and Opunake team defeated Bell Block, before facing Hawera Intermediate School again in the final. For the second time in the competition the combined team defeated Hawera Intermediate making themselves the 2014 Champions. The school is thrilled with their efforts and of all the schools and boys involved. We are looking to post some images from this special occasion. Well done to Luke, Jack and Riley P. You can read Luke and Jacks recounts here, or visit Riley P page and read his recount about the final here.

Every Friday the junior school students at Auroa Primary School are able to take part in discovery time which is a series of activities that they are able to choose related to a theme. The students are assisted by the teachers from Rooms 8, 7 and 6 as well as Teacher Aides and senior students from Room One. Last Fridays theme was Mothers Day, and students were preparing creations and gifts for their Mothers. You can read about these also on Izzys blog here.

What items were the students making? Do you celebrate Mothers Day in your country? Did you create anything for Mothers Day this year or in the past? Do you have any great craft ideas that you could share?

Thursday, 8 May 2014

In class for Mathematics we've been looking at using tools to explain strategies. One of the tools that our students have been using is Educreations which is available as an App for Ipad. These students have created these explanations about strategies to solve problems. They've worked out a problem, worked on creating an explanation of the strategy and then recorded the strategy. This is from Tahana who is explaining how to solve problems by doubling and halving.
Isabelle from Room Ones Question was: How many hours are in a year? She worked out the answer using strategy and explains her answer as follows:
The final example is from Meg. Meg question uses rounding to solve the problem 39 multiplied by 80.

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

Last term we made some fantastic collaborations with classrooms and students from around the world. One of our best contacts was with the students from 6RC in Sydney.

Since the start of this term the students have created their own individual blogs. Our task this morning is to visit at least one of the students blogs, look a piece of work or post created by the student and leave a comment about the post. All of the 6RC student blogs can be accessed by clicking on the link to their class page here.

Opunake Primary School, Room One, Y7/8 have also started their own individual student blogs. They did this at the end of last term and since then they've begun posting again for the start of the new term. Just like Room One, Auroa Primary School you can click on the Room One, Opunake Primary School page and see the students pages on the right hand side.

Monday, 5 May 2014

Today students returned from our end of term one break. As part of our learning this term we were looking at schools, classrooms and students who have contacted us during our break. One of our collaborations is with the students from Scotland. As part of that collaboration we decided to brainstorm what we knew about Scotland. Our students were placed in groups, collaborated with each other to check their information and then came up with this. How accurate is it? Do you know additional information about Scotland? Is there anything on the list that is not correct?

Thursday, 1 May 2014

We're currently in the school holidays in New Zealand, our first day of term two is going to be Monday 5th of May when our students will be back in class. In the meantime we're currently in the second and final week of the term one holidays. Not for some! Students last week and this have been meeting to plan their entries for Auroa Schools Robotics teams for 2014! The competition starts with our regional competition, taking place at Wanganui Intermediate in June. Auroa have set themselves a tough challenge - last year placing first, second and third in the Junior Theatre section of the competition, This is followed by the Robocup Nationals taking place in September, in Dunedin.

While we are unable to reveal too many details before the competition we'd love to hear from you if you are attending your respective regional qualifying competitions and would really like to hear from anyone else whose intending to be in Dunedin for the finals.